


All Is Calm, All Is Bright

by cloudsandpassingevents



Category: Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Fluff without Plot, M/M, and well, courfeyrac is a human space heater, if you define plot as vague excuse for theology gratituous metaphors and kissing, jehan is happy that courfeyrac's warmth is both a metaphor and an actual thing, smut went out the window, this was fluffy and then jehan took over
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-20
Updated: 2013-12-20
Packaged: 2018-01-05 06:23:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,741
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1090666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cloudsandpassingevents/pseuds/cloudsandpassingevents
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The night outside is cold and dark, but between Jehan's words and Courfeyrac's smiles, they find ways to stay warm anyways.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All Is Calm, All Is Bright

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ezrastvnsn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ezrastvnsn/gifts).



> Beta'd by the ever lovely enjolrasisatimelord, who also held my hand through my first real fic-writing experience and listened to me complain about writer's block without ever once telling me to just suck it up and start writing already, no matter how much I deserved to be told that.
> 
> Written for Ezra (ezrastvnsn), who asked for Jehan/Courfeyrac fluff/smut. Well, there's no smut (I tried, I really did, but honestly, considering my aptitude at anything remotely romantic, it's probably better that I stayed far away from that), and the fluff shows up about, oh, 800 words in, but it's there. Anyways, I hope you like it, and have a great holiday season!

They had only been traveling for a few minutes before Jehan spoke. "Tell me again about who you are taking me to visit," he said, breaking the silence that had settled in the small cabin of the stagecoach.

Courfeyrac turned from where he had been looking out the window. "What is there to tell, my dear Jehan?" he asked, shifting so that his head rested on Jehan's shoulder, curls tickling his chin. "I have already told them that I am bringing a dear, dear friend of mine that they must meet and absolutely will love to see them, and as for you, you know the names of my aunts, where my mother was born, which of my sisters are married-"

"But nothing of importance!" Jehan protested, looking down at Courfeyrac. "What authors does your youngest sister read, what are your aunts' opinions on The Rights of Man, does your mother spend nights reading by her bed or going out to look at the stars?" 

Courfeyrac laughed gently. "Well, you shall get your answers now, if I can remember all your questions. Therese is at the stage where she only will read those romance penny-novels, so I'm afraid you shan't get any discussion of the finer points of literature out of her. I don't know whether any of my aunts besides Aunt Blanche have even seen The Rights of Man, though if they have, they no doubt have a very strong opinion about it that they will attempt to loudly lecture you into submission with. And as for my mother, as far as I can recall, she only watches the stars from the window of her bedroom after her candle has burned out and the house is dark, and she is a religious reader." He took a deep breath, having answered very quickly without pause, and pretended to swoon in Jehan's lap. "Does that make anything clearer?" 

"It's a start," Jehan said, absentmindedly playing with Courfeyrac's hair as he thought. He wrapped a finger around a curled lock and pulled lightly, earning himself a muffled, indignant sound from his lap. "Hè, I spent two hours on that!" 

"How did you manage to do that?" Jehan asked amusedly, watching as Courfeyrac desperately tried to twist the hair around his finger to force it back into a curl. It stubbornly refused, and eventually he gave up, letting the now-wavy hair droop down into his face. 

"It was not as simple as you think," he protested. "My aunts refuse to speak to me unless I look absolutely impeccable at their parties. And as I lost my last hat two weeks ago, if I were to waltz in now looking like this, I dare say one of them would bar the door to me and I would be forced to stand forlorn in the snow."

"And without a hat as well," Jehan added, laughing. "Trapped outside Heaven's gates without a Beatrice to guide you forth, nor a Virgil to take you back through Hell, doomed to forever remain between-"

"Ah, but I would be trapped with you," Courfeyrac interjected, "and would that not be enough? For you to guide me through the circles of hell until we reached the living world once more?"

"Oh, that would be glorious," Jehan said, his voice growing earnest. "To travel through the circles of hell, to see the fires burn and the dead rise as if the Final Days had come before your eyes-"

"And then Combeferre would lecture you on the impossibility of the dead rising from their graves, no doubt," Courfeyrac said. He made a final valiant attempt to curl the lock of hair, then seemed to give it up as a lost cause. "Or perhaps go off to discover a way to do that himself. Though I suppose his teachers might get suspicious if the corpses he took for dissection suddenly began walking around the hospital." 

"But to see the dead given life again through the will of God," Jehan breathed, looking out the window. "Not through the efforts of man to preserve something that has gone, but the rekindling of the sparks in every man through the divine light!" 

Courfeyrac looked at Jehan for a moment in silence. When he spoke, his voice was oddly thoughtful. "I imagine, Jehan, that the glories you see in store for man are no less than the ones God did when he first created the flames of humanity."

Jehan blushed, lowering his head so that his hair covered his face. "Nonsense," he said. "God gives light, but it is man who ultimately creates the flame. Sparks cannot become a fire without warmth." 

"Is that what I am for, then?" asked Courfeyrac, smiling. "To fan the sparks of revolution into a conflagration that will burn away the old order, leaving only the pure essence of the people behind?" 

"No," Jehan said, lifting his legs onto the carriage seat and trying to shove Courfeyrac's legs aside. "There are flames that must consume and destroy the old order to bring the new forth, but there also must be flames that cleanse the world as it rises from the ashes of the destruction and suffering, and that is what you are for."

"I am a baptism by fire?" Courfeyrac asked, his lips quirking up. Jehan swatted his forehead lightly. 

"No. You are the warmth that greets the world as it arises from its grave of ignorance and despair, and shows it the soul that fights and laughs and loves and finds joy in the depths of night and abysses of despair." Jehan leaned back against the wall of the stagecoach, letting Courfeyrac shift so he was draped over Jehan, his head resting on his chest. "You are the warmth that sustains life after it has been rewoken and reborn into the glorious world it deserves." 

Courfeyrac is silent for a second. "Then what are you, my dear Jehan?" 

"What would you have me be?" Jehan asked lightly, playing with Courfeyrac's hair again. His hand brushed against Courfeyrac's forehead and knocked the uncurled strand of hair loose. Courfeyrac pouted, glaring at the lock in mock indignation as it swung before his eyes, before returning his gaze to Jehan.

"What would I have you be?" Courfeyrac asked. "If I am to be the sustaining flame, you and Enjolras and Combeferre and Feuilly shall have to be Prometheuses, will you not? Carrying the sacred flame down to man, illuminating the world, so to speak, casting away the shadows and the night with the power of the spirit of man - yes, that sounds about right." He paused for a second before grinning widely. "There. I told that myth correctly, at least."

"You did," Jehan laughed gently, threading his hands into Courfeyrac's hair, careful to not pull at any curls this time. "Although you did call yourself a 'sacred flame.'" 

"You do not find me sacred?" Courfeyrac teased, pushing himself up on his forearms so that his face was level with Jehan's. "Why, my dear Jehan, I am wounded." 

"No, not sacred," Jehan said, "for the sacred is untouchable and unapproachable, and I cannot imagine you for a second being any of those things. Say divine, rather: the human spirit imbued with glory, but without becoming ineffable."

"So then you admit I am divine!" Courfeyrac said triumphantly, grinning widely.

"You are the warmth of the divine flame that resides in all of mankind," Jehan answered, before Courfeyrac pressed a kiss to his lips. He lifted one hand up to tangle in Courfeyrac's hair, and managed to knock them both off balance, falling into the narrow space between the two benches of the stagecoach. 

"Oof," Courfeyrac muttered from where he had been wedged between the seats. "In retrospect, this was perhaps not the best place to do this."

"Nonsense," Jehan said, trying to disentangle his arms from where they had somehow gotten lodged under the bench. “It would be folly of us to speak of the divine in man and then restrain the desires of that divinity when they came upon us.” He managed to get up and pulled himself back up onto the bench, tucking his legs under him so Courfeyrac could stand. 

“Even if those desires end with me getting stuck here for the rest of the ride and wrinkling my coat to unacceptable levels?” Courfeyrac asked, finally standing up, only to have the stagecoach jolt and knock him off balance, causing him to fall on top of Jehan. The two of them fell sideways onto the seat, barely managing to not roll back off again. Courfeyrac stuck out an arm and braced himself against the other bench before kissing Jehan again, feeling Jehan's arms come up to rest loosely behind his neck. When he broke away, both of them were breathing heavily. Jehan's eyes were bright as he tugged on the back of Courfeyrac's neck, pulling him down into another deep kiss. 

“'Unacceptable' is defined by society’s whims,” Jehan said as he sat up, accidentally knocking Courfeyrac back onto the ground. “The first step to freeing the sacred flame in man is to loosen the bonds that society places on it.”

“And yet this sacred flame of yours seems to produce no warmth at all,” Courfeyrac said, taking the hand Jehan extended to him and pushing himself off the ground. “Your hands are freezing. Lie down,” he commanded, taking off his coat and draping it over Jehan’s body. Gently, he shoved Jehan’s legs closer to the back of the seat and slowly climbed onto the bench with him, wrapping both him arms around the smaller man. “Warmer now?” Jehan murmured something unintelligible into his chest, wiggling in closer and curling into Courfeyrac. 

Gently, he kissed Jehan on the head, then rested his head against the windowpane, looking outside into the night. They had hours before they reached Lyon, and the night was dark and cold, but even as he looked up at the sky, Courfeyrac could barely make out pinpricks of light glowing from beyond the clouds. Tiny sparks, he thought to himself, and smiled, looking down and brushing the hair off Jehan’s forehead before returning to his position. Pressing his cheek to the glass, he counted the stars, and slowly, lulled by the steady rocking of the carriage and the warm weight of Jehan’s head on his chest, he fell asleep, dreaming of warmth and light and the slow, insistent glow of dreams kindled into reality.


End file.
